30 bales of pot found floating in waters off Marina del Rey

Thirty bales of marijuana with an estimated street value of $500,000 were found floating in the waters off Marina del Rey, sheriff's deputies said Thursday.

Sheriff's Sgt. Michael Carriles said a recreational boater first found five bales in the water around noon Wednesday and alerted deputies and the U.S. Coast Guard.

Not long after, authorities found another 25 bales in the same vicinity - within a roughly 4-square-mile area about six nautical miles northwest of the harbor entrance, he said.

Carriles said it appeared as though the bales had been floating in the water for some time. Where they came from is unknown.

The marijuana was taken to the Marina del Rey sheriff's station and transferred to the custody of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, deputies said.

The investigation is being handled by Border Protection, the Coast Guard and a multiagency federal security task force.

Carriles said the find appears to be unrelated to the weekend discovery of more than 1,000 pounds of marijuana from a Mexican panga boat that beached in Malibu. Three men were arrested in that incident.